Friends

I would say that, to some degree, everybody has issues with trust; With opening themselves to another human being completely. This is because inside, we are all afraid of being hurt, and having that trust we gave out betrayed. I regret to say that I don’t really have a positive spin to what I’m going to write today. This is more for me to rant and get some of this hurt I’m feeling out there. If what I write today helps someone, I’m glad. With all that said, let me dive right into things.

I don’t trust easily. I don’t open myself up to others, because I am afraid of being hurt. But that’s not to say that I’ve never opened myself up to anyone, because I have. I haven’t done it with many people, only two I can think of. Of these two people, one of them is someone who I can say, with as close to being 100% certain as is humanly possible, wouldn’t betray me. But then again, I guess I would have said the same thing about the other person and that didn’t really work out in my favor. I guess there is a reason trust is normally built up over a long period of time, because this other person and I hit things off really quickly, becoming fast friends. This may be because of the close proximity which our majors put us, but whatever it was, we became good friends. There may have been more to it – more to our feelings than just friendship, but that was never outwardly expressed. Just something that may have been under the surface. But I cared about this person, because I care about my friends. Regardless of whether or not I have feelings beyond friendship for them. I care about all of my friends. If I call you a friend that means something to me – I invest a lot of myself into friendships, because that’s just who I am. I will always be there for my friends, no matter what. When they won’t do the same for me – god that hurts. It hurts so fucking much. That’s just a normal friendship, not one where I have opened myself up to someone. Because I guess part of me had an expectation that if I opened myself up to someone, they wouldn’t hurt me. But I guess I was wrong.

“When you care about someone, you can’t just turn that off because you learn they betrayed you.” ― Paula Stokes

I guess she just never cared about me. I feel I should pause for a moment and mention the fact that this person has a significant other. This is why those feelings I mentioned earlier were never expressed. But back to things: I just have a hard time understanding, I guess, how you can let someone open up to you if you don’t care about them, and if you don’t have any intention of sticking around. I think that’s wrong and irresponsible. Trust is a fucking valuable thing. It represents a person’s vulnerability, it represents how much they respect and value you, and it represents their belief in you. Their belief that you would never hurt them. Trust isn’t restricted to romantic relationships, either. That’s not why I’m upset. What upsets me is how they’re behaving towards me now. You see, I noticed how she began to act weird around me come finals time last semester, but I thought it was just the stress of exams. When it continued into the next semester, I went to talk to her. She said she needed space, she said she didn’t really get what was happening last semester, but that she just needed space. Which is fine, I can respect that. And I have. I have given them their space. But there is a difference between wanting space and avoiding someone completely which is what has been happening. They have been avoiding me completely. And god that fucking hurts – they won’t even talk to me anymore. I don’t understand how someone can do that. Because this trust wasn’t one sided, either, they trusted me too. I would never do anything to betray someone’s trust. So how can they just walk away? I don’t get it.

Friendship is delicate as a glass, once broken it can be fixed but there will always be cracks. -Waqar Ahmed

My example may seem childish to some of you, and I would argue that it isn’t. Because the value of trust doesn’t change, neither with age, nor experience. It changes on an individual basis, and to me, I don’t have anything more valuable to give someone than my trust and my friendship. All I want is my friend back, but that’s not going to happen. I have to come to terms with that. It fucking sucks, but I can’t do anything to change it.

One last quote to end things

A true friend is someone who is there for you when they’d rather be anywhere else. – Len Wein